


your happiness, my broken heart, and what the future holds

by EllaYuki



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Percieved Infidelity, Post-Canon, epilogue compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 13:29:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17488913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllaYuki/pseuds/EllaYuki
Summary: Keith is Shiro's best man at his wedding and he does it with a smile as much as it pains him.Years later, at one of the Paladins' reunions, things happen and Keith runs away with barely a word, so as to not complicate things even more. Obviously, it doesn't go quite as he expects.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is split up into five short chapters mostly because I didn't like the flow of it when I was reading through it. I'm still a bit iffy over that but oh well. 
> 
> Also, I haven't watched season 8 (and don't intend to) so this is mostly based on what bits of it I've seen and read about on the internet. 
> 
> _Also,_ I suck at summaries, as usual.

It breaks his heart, the walk down the aisle, giving Shiro away, standing by his side while he marries someone else. It breaks his heart, but still, he does it all, and with a smile on his face.

“I don't know how you had the strength to do all that today,” Hunk says, a soft whisper while he and Keith watch from their table as the happy couple dances. “I wouldn't have been able to. Hell, I'd be a wreck, probably.”

Keith spares him a glance, a rueful smile on his lips. “His happiness means more to me than the love I bear. It was…” And here he stops, for a moment, taking a breath. He turns to face Hunk. “I won't say it was easy. It wasn't. But…” And he looks out to the dance ring again. Shiro is whispering something to his new husband. Keith shrugs past the sting in his chest. “Seeing him smile like that today… That's worth everything.”

And it hurts but he means every word he says.

What he doesn't say, though, is that he hasn't seen Shiro smile as brightly as today since the day he'd told Keith he'd been chosen to pilot the Kerberos mission. What he doesn't says is that he’s always known this day would come. First, as a vague notion of some probable, far-off future, and then, later, as a certainty borne from a time distortion-based vision.

Keith keeps those to himself. He doesn't want to be pitied, he doesn't want his friends to feel sorry for him even more than they already do. (He doesn't want to have to explain why he didn't try to change it all if he'd known it would happen.)

He can feel Hunk looking at him, silent but with sympathy in his eyes, but he keeps his gaze resolutely forward.

Yes, it hurts. But Shiro is happy, and so Keith will be happy for him, even as he nurses his broken, bleeding heart.

(Shiro catches his gaze over Curtis’ shoulder, and his smile is like the sun, and Keith knows he's made the right choice.)

 


	2. Chapter 2

The shock of the kiss doesn’t sober him up, not nearly enough for him to push Shiro away, to put a stop to this sudden madness. Not when Shiro’s human hand is slowly caressing up his spine under his shirt, not when his prosthetic fingers card through Keith’s hair and grip, gently, and shift his head this way and that, for a better angle.

Not when the slide of Shiro’s tongue against his own is literally something out of his fantasies since Keith was sixteen.

No, Keith can’t push Shiro away, even as a niggling voice at the back of his head keeps whispering _‘You shouldn’t do this. He’s married, you shouldn’t be doing this’_.

It’s been over ten years since everything ended, eight since the wedding, the day Keith gave Shiro away with a smile and a broken heart. And it’s been two years since the last time they’ve seen each other, because Keith’s efforts to help those that are still trying to get their lives together after the war and after thousands of years of Galran occupation tends to keep him too busy to even see his own mother, let alone his old friends.

So yes, it’s a shock that after so long, and after a normal evening, having dinner with the other Paladins (former Paladins, now, but still), he finds himself being kissed to within an inch of his life.

But Keith can’t make himself stop, can’t make himself stop Shiro, can only drown in the feeling and in the moment.

 

~

 

In the morning, he leaves quietly, head pounding, heart bleeding, shame burning hot through his veins.

‘I’m sorry I had to leave early, but duty calls,’ the note he leaves behind says, a feeble excuse. And, because he feels like it needs to be said, ‘Go back to your husband, Shiro, I’m sure he misses you dearly’.

It doesn’t feel like enough, but he doesn’t know how much Shiro will remember, so he leaves it vague, just in case (he, himself, remembers everything, because such is his luck in life). If Shiro wakes up and doesn’t remember, well, then Keith will tell him Shiro was being a maudlin drunk.

If he _does_ remember... Keith can only hope it will be enough to assure Shiro Keith will not bring it up in the future, that it was something that happened because they were drunk and nothing more (though he knows the guilt will eat Shiro alive, just like it does Keith.)


	3. Chapter 3

He misses the reunion the next year, not because he wants to (and Gods, did he want to at first, too terrified of ever seeing Shiro again, seeing what one drunken night has done to their already straining friendship), but because he’s unconscious from an ambush from the last remaining dredges of Zarkon’s empire.

He wakes up a week after the meeting was to take place to several video messages from Pidge and from Hunk and from Lance, and two text messages from Shiro (‘When are you arriving? We should talk.’ and ‘Krolia told us what happened. I hope you wake up soon. I miss you.’)

He sends them all a short message, text, because he doesn’t feel up to video calls, and because he doesn’t think he’ll be able to handle their scolding for not being careful (he got that enough from his mother and Kolivan as soon as he opened his eyes).

‘I’m awake,’ the message says. ‘Still worn out, but I’m fine, so please stop worrying. I’ll call when my throat stops feeling like I’ve swallowed glass. Sorry I couldn’t be there to see you guys.’

(He still gets scolded, even via texts, and he can’t help smiling with every incoming text. Pidge can be very… creative with her threats regarding what she’ll do to him if he ever scares them like that again.)

(‘I’m just glad you’re alright,’ the text from Shiro comes, a few hours later, and it’s so… _simple_ , it makes something ache behind Keith’s ribs, but he can’t tell if it’s a good ache or a bad one. Maybe it’s a bit of both.)


	4. Chapter 4

 

When he hears about the divorce, it feels like a slap to the face, and the guilt that he’d been trying to ignore since that night comes crashing back into him full force.

The fact that he hears about it from Curtis himself only makes it worse.

He’s been on Earth for two days, three months after the ambush, when he runs into the man in the town near the Garrison.

It’s… not awkward, per se, but Keith honestly wishes he could be anywhere else but there.

“So how’s Shiro?” he asks, after a few minutes of pleasantries and more or less catching up. He expects to hear about how the man’s been enjoying retirement, how Curtis has had to put up with Shiro’s latest hobbies.

What he gets instead is a small frown and a “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

For a second, Keith can’t breathe. Then, he swallows past the knot in his throat enough to ask. “What are you talking about? Why should I know how your husband’s doing?” And maybe it comes out a tiny bit harsh, but Keith is suddenly gripped by fear. What if Curtis knows? But he wouldn’t be so pleasant now if he knew, right?

Curtis’ frown turns puzzled. “You… don’t know?” he asks, and there’s something about the way he says it. Like he fully expected Keith to know, whatever it is. “Keith,” he says, gently, “Takashi and I… we’re divorced.”

And for a second, Keith feels like the ground has opened up beneath him and he’s free-falling. _Oh Gods, this is his fault, it’s all his-_

“When?” he manages to croak out, not able to look Curtis in the face. “ _Why?_ ”

Curtis shrugs, seemingly unbothered. “We realized we wanted different things. It took him a while to realize and to admit that he still longed for the stars, and he got restless. I just wanted to settle down, maybe have a kid, and put everything space related as far behind us as we could.” He looks to the side, and then up at the sky. “Maybe we rushed, getting married. But well, we were happy, so at least there’s that.” He looks back down at Keith. “We decided to split up when it was clear that what we wanted was different. And I guess, I thought…” He shrugs again. “I thought you’d be the one he went to.”

Keith shakes his head. “I haven’t seen him since- since last year’s Paladin reunion,” he manages to say.

“And he didn’t say anything about it? It’s been almost three years now, I’d have thought he’d have at least told his friends.”

_Three years… Shiro’s been divorced for three years and he didn’t say anything…_

“Maybe he told the others,” he says, taking a breath. “I missed the reunion around that time, I think, and well… Shiro and I haven’t really talked all that much the past few years. We’ve seen each other two, maybe three times in the past five years. I guess it wasn’t something he felt I should know. To be honest I didn’t even notice if he was still wearing the ring or not.”

_We slept together and he didn’t say anything…_

Curtis hums, low, and fixes Keith with a searching look. “Well, it’s in the past now. We’re both moving on with our lives. Maybe…” And the look changes into something pensive, considering. “Maybe you should call him. Talk. I’m sure he’ll want to hear from his best friend after so long.”

Keith nods, and later, when he’s back in his designated room at the Garrison, he spends two whole hours agonizing, writing and rewriting a text message to Shiro. Everything he comes up with seems too formal, too stilted, not good enough.

In the end, he settles for a simple, ‘I’m on Earth, at the Garrison for the next week. We should talk.’

He presses send before he can rethink it.


	5. Chapter 5

They meet two days later, at an old favorite spot of theirs in the desert. _A cliff edge at sunset, seems fitting,_ Keith thinks.

It’s as awkward as he’d expected it to be.

“Hey,” Keith manages, after a long moment of silence.

“Hey, Keith,” Shiro says, a sad smile on his lips. Keith wants to wipe it off his face, though whether with his own lips or with a punch, he’s not yet sure.

“How have you been, Keith?” Shiro asks, after a while, looking out at the horizon. The sun’s only just barely started to sink. “You really scared us a while back.”

“I’m fine,” Keith answers. “I got knocked out pretty hard and it took a while to wake up, but I’m fine now. I told you guys to stop worrying about it.”

Shiro looks at him, and there’s something like disappointment in his gaze. “We’re your friends, your family, Keith, of course we’d worry. You’d worry, too, if it was any one of us.”

And well, he’s got him there. Keith can’t argue with that. He sighs. “You’re right. I’m sorry. But I really am alright.”

“Good.”

For a while, they watch the sunset in silence, and Keith is reminded of days long past, when the most exciting thing in their lives were their hoverbike races and the prospect of one day going to another planet.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks eventually, when he can’t hold his curiosity in check anymore. “You could have told me.”

“Told you what?”

“About the divorce, Shiro.”

“Oh. That.”

The simple, off-hand way Shiro says it, makes Keith bristle. It’s a rare thing, him being angry with Shiro, but he is now. “ _’Oh, that’_ he says like I haven’t been a stressed mess for the past year about you cheating on your husband with me.”

Shiro snorts, sighs, and looks out at the sun. It’s halfway set by now. “It’s not like you actually gave me a chance to say anything, Keith. ‘Go back to your husband’? Is how you put it? When you left me alone after we spent the night together?”

Keith’s cheeks burn at the reminder. Still, his anger won’t be assuaged. “You could have said something before that. Hell, I wouldn’t know _right now_ if I hadn’t bumped into Curtis a few days ago.”

That makes Shiro look at him. “You saw Curtis?”

Keith frowns. “Ran into him in town. That’s not the point. He told me about why you divorced. You could have told me you wanted to travel again. I could have-“

“What? You could have what, Keith? Dropped everything and come to my rescue again? You have better things to do. And besides, I thought…” He stops, takes a deep breath, and shakes his head. That rueful smile is back on his face. “I thought I’d tell you at the reunion, but we got drunk before I got around to it, and… well, you know what happened after that. And after the way you left, I couldn’t say anything.”

“You should have told me,” Keith insists, though without any fire behind it now.

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says. “I guess, we both should have handled that better.”

Keith looks at him, sees the regret, the sadness, the care, in Shiro’s eyes and breathes out, long, soft. Leans over and rests his forehead against Shiro’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry, too, for running away,” he whispers. “I thought I was doing the right thing, giving you an out if you didn’t remember, and not being there to face the reality of your infidelity if you did. And…” He swallows. It’s hard to admit. “I was afraid. I’d wanted that for so long, for years and years, and I knew I could never have it, have _you_ , not really… I was afraid of your disappointment, of yet another rejection… so I took the coward’s way out.”

“We’re both idiots,” Shiro says, eventually, and Keith can’t help the startled snort of laughter bubbling out of him.

“I guess we are.”

It doesn’t surprise him when Shiro wraps his arm around his shoulders and pulls him closer, though he doesn’t expect it. It’s gentle, and it warms him to his core. After everything, they can still sit here, facing the sunset, at ease in each other’s presence and content.  

They still have things to talk about, to clear up, there’s still so much to catch up on, and things that need doing and saying.

But for now, just being here, like this, with Shiro, is enough for Keith to feel happier than he’s been in long, long years.

For now, everything else, the entire universe, can wait.

 


End file.
